Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

M3GAN Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 17, 2023

In the "old days" of movies, stories about A.I. run amok were largely impersonal. Think The Terminator and its larger backstory about Skynet, the artificial intelligence that assumed control over military action and decided to start a nuclear World War III, kill the majority of mankind, and wage war against the remaining remnants. Now, with such radical advances in artificial intelligence, the scares grow more personal in M3GAN, Director Gerard Johnstone's (Housebound) film about a sentient doll that takes its tasks of protecting a little girl from harm a bit too literally. The film delves more into superficial rather than deep commentary on artificial intelligence and its relationship to flesh-and-blood humanity, but it offers sufficient narrative depth to make an otherwise familiar Slasher structure feel more novel than it really is.

When young Cady's (Violet McGraw) parents die in an automobile accident, she is left to live with her aunt Gemma (Allison Williams), a robotics engineer who has no understanding of how to raise a child, never mind the time to do so or learn. In order to better care for Cady, she puts plans into motion to create a lifelike robotic companion for her which she dubs "M3GAN" (Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis), a lifelike doll that is fully self-sufficient. The doll is both teacher and friend to Cady, and the two hit it off quickly. But when M3GAN comes to realize that there are things in the world out to harm Cady -- whether emotionally or physically -- the doll turns to violent means to quell any possibility of danger befalling the girl in her care. Meanwhile, Gemma's work earns the reluctant praise of her boss, David (Ronny Chieng), putting her and her design on the fast-track to success. M3GAN might have other plans for the company, however.

Certainly the place of artificial intelligence is nothing new -- Star Trek: The Next Generation portrayed Data as one of its main characters, and films like A.I. and, in a more roundabout way, S1mone have focused on much of the same qualities, characteristics, and thought processes as M3GAN, but M3GAN puts a slasher bend on the material. In that way, the film feels more urgently pertinent, exploring more worst-case scenario rather than the general ups and downs, positives and negatives, of artificial intelligence. At its core is a film that is all too familiar. Broadly, the film is formulaic and predictable, but its qualities are found in the title character who uses advanced AI to nurture and rear its human, using emotionless logic to push its programming and commands to the most literal degree, which ends in murder and mayhem.

The film is also different from Child's Play in that M3GAN is not possessed by an evil spirit, though one can make a compelling argument that anything made by man certainly has the potential to be imbued with evil considering man's track record of evil through the millennia. Still, this is cutting-edge Horror in terms of modern technology run amok while in the guise of a realistic plaything. The visuals are striking for complexity; the doll looks real at-a-glance but it's in some of the doll's fine-point details that one finds the separation between artificial and organic. The eyes are striking, and the filmmakers have, through the power of personality, brought life to the soulless machine and to its eyes in particular in a startlingly realistic manner that is the key to the film: the blurring of the line between what is real and what is not and how dangerous artificial intelligence can be.

M3GAN Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Universal releases M3GAN to Blu-ray with a fine looking 1080p transfer. The image enjoys bountiful clarity and razor-sharp definition to various elements throughout the film, including, of course, the doll's facial features, which are eerily lifelike though lacking that finest human skin subtlety, and its hair, which is sharp and identifiable practically to the individual strand. Of course, human faces are equally appealing for clarity and definition, while various location details, whether inside homes or out in nature, revel exquisite clarity and robust definition. Colors are satisfying within the film's fairly neutral color timing and palette that never veers off course towards warmth or coolness. Whites are notably intense and true in the "testing" area where Cady interacts with Megan for David and the company in a few scenes. Black levels depth is rock-solid, too, especially at night. Skin tones look true. Noise is but a minimal disturbance and there are no obvious encode issues to report. This is a very nice-looking image from Universal.

M3GAN Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

M3GAN slashes onto Blu-ray with a DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 lossless soundtrack. The presentation is well balanced, offering both subtle atmospherics and hushed dialogue as well as deep and penetrating action-type elements with equal clarity and definition. The track takes full advantage of the stage environment, utilizing every speaker for spacious music, ambience, and hard-hitting action, especially when all of those elements converge in various scenes depicting M3GAN slashing her way through those she deems a target for her destructive energy. Surrounds and subwoofer utilization are always very high when necessary, but the track is also equally efficient when making use of those same components to produce gentle, immersive audio subtleties that draw the listener into more serene environments. Clarity to all such content is fantastic. Dialogue is clear and robust with firm and natural front-center positioning throughout.

M3GAN Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of M3GAN contains three featurettes. A DVD copy of the film and a Movies Anywhere digital copy code are included with purchase. This release ships with an embossed slipcover. This release also includes two cuts of the film: Theatrical (1:41:56) and Unrated (1:41:50).

• A New Vision of Horror (1080p, 5:51): Exploring the core idea, James Wan's involvement, the "Killer Doll" genre, story elements and narrative characteristics, locations, production design, VFX work, M3GAN design and animatronics/puppets, and more.
• Bringing Life to M3GAN (1080p, 5:22): A closer look at building the film's title character: aesthetics, building various models needed for specific applications, puppeteering work, and more
• Getting Hacked (1080p, 3:45): Looking at M3GAN's core mission, and how the AI turned into a brutal killing machine. It also explores stunt work, gory prosthetics, and more.

M3GAN Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

M3GAN finds some value in exploring the personalized dangers of A.I. in the home run amok. The film feels eerily plausible in 2023 given the radical advances in the world or synthetic life, but of course the film tailors the story and the dangers to build a Slasher film. The picture does a good job of toeing the line between thoughtful commentary and brainless entertainment, but it's ultimately better suited to an experience favoring the latter. Universal's Blu-ray is solid. The video and audio presentations are fine, but the supplements are thin. Recommended, especially to Slasher genre fans.